Saturday, December 03, 2005

About Zend and PHP сollaboration

What you are going to read in this post (if you decide to continue) is my sole IMHO, gathered from those little bits of information I ocassionally catch on the web. I do not communicate with developes and my vision is often filtered through the prism of negative positivism and critic to make the dark side of the facts more visible (I am not original here). Somebody may call it FUD, but on the other side somebody has to be evil and spit acid on behalf of good. Here is the vision of the Zend story, which may or may not be true.

Zend makes money. That's all I can say. Not a bad goal, but it took wrong side IMHO. Perhaps it was since the beginning, when folks decided to sell engine itself and not PHP, but the situation changed with PHP took over the web and Zend has to admit it. Quickly guys realized that engine itself is not very popular and PHP quickly overruns the budget for its support and development on a full time basis. Perhaps it was the time when Zend appeared on the web scene proposing PHP services, such as famous Zend Studio. Well, I've never used Zend Studio, because it was just too expensive for me and simple Far Manager + Colorer was more than sufficient for my needs. Of course, Zend needs money to support all PHP.NET infrastructure, developers, to promote it's products, but.. it seems that Zend more concerned with the money than with anything else, making chaotic PHP users community a fortunate third party instrument for their goals. Perhaps they were dragged to the "money for money" road by these "enterprise" mindmakers and business suits, but this doesn't make things better. It is rather obvious that Zend is under the pressure these days. The great struggle enforces Zend to take a decision and I do not think this decision will be good for those, who was inspired by README.CVS-RULES to elaborate in the past. Neutrality was the primary guide of core PHP developers from start and we all were excited to participate and make this world a little better.

Global trust what could be easy to learn is also easy to lose. I do not believe PHP license was intended to hurt or protect anyone's rights, but rather expressed trust to core PHP developers and to their intentions from those, who released scripts with it's terms. But GPL folks from one side and lawsuits other both want to formalize development process to degree when human relations will be absolutely ruined with an aim to feed servants of law and a bigger players behind. After some experiments with communities I must admit that your professional skills do not play any significant role when there is a real person, who just doesn't like you on receiver side - but this is another story with some peanuts about commercial social engineering, though some aspects of it directly influence current state of business with Zend. I'd like to recommend this company to provide more visibility into future plans, feel responsibility for the buzzwords, support PHP.NET and collaboration from developer's side.